Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Vietnam sees no debris in area flagged by Chinese

Vietnamese searchers reported seeing no sign of debris Thursday when they flew over an area of sea that Chinese authorities had flagged as the location of possible remnants of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The news appeared to dash the latest hope of finding a lead in the baffling disappearance of the Malaysian plane, which vanished early Saturday while flying over Southeast Asia.

The mystery over the fate of the passenger jet and the 239 people it was carrying has so far left government officials and aviation expertsExperts flummoxed.

The search for the plane — frustrating and fruitless so far — entered its sixth day Thursday.

A plane from Vietnam’s National Committee for Search and Rescue carried out a flight Thursday morning over the area identified by Chinese satellite imagery, said Doan Luu Van, International Affairs Coordinator with the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam.

He said the committee would send another scouting mission “early this afternoon” to the same location.

China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said satellite images showed “three suspected floating objects” that it described as “a suspected crash site.”

The images were captured around 11 a.m. on March 9, the day after the plane went missing, but weren’t released until Wednesday.

The Chinese agency gave coordinates of 105.63 east longitude, 6.7 north latitude, which would put the objects in waters between Malaysia and southern of Vietnam, near where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Also on Thursday, a Malaysian aviation official told CNN that the last known words from the flight crew of the missing plane were “Alright, good night.”

Malaysian civil aviation officer Zulazri Mohd Ahnuar said he couldn’t confirm which member of the flight crew sent the message, which was transmitted from the plane back to Malaysian flight controllers as the aircraft transferred into Vietnamese airspace early Saturday.